


Every Other Day

by stellar_dust



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-08-10
Updated: 2008-08-10
Packaged: 2017-10-05 20:42:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,833
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/45857
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stellar_dust/pseuds/stellar_dust
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's strange to be in love, but it's almost stranger not to be.  Maybe it's all the same, in the end - people changing, lives changing, and somehow, in his mind, Rose doesn't.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Every Other Day

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place before _Turn Left_.

~  ~

 

"So, you and that River woman, huh?" Donna sits on the chair, swinging her feet as she watches the Doctor puttering about the TARDIS console.

"Looks like maybe," he answers airily, squinting into an open panel. Ah, there's that loose connection, no time at all to fix. He clutches his sonic screwdriver between his teeth and reaches inside. "Shouldn't think about it too hard, though, sp-"

"-poilers, right, I know. What about Rose?"

The Doctor pulls too hard on a wire. Sparks fly as he jumps back from the console, waving at the air. "Oi now, careful! Watch it!"

"Oh! Sorry -"

"No, s'all right, s'all right. Easily fixed." He straightens his spectacles and peers at Donna. "_What_ about Rose?" Oh no, no no no no no, please not this again. "I haven't gone on about her too much, have I?"

"You haven't brought her up ever, Doctor, not once." She cocks her head at him. "And that's the thing, innit?"

 

~  ~

 

He knew he was in love with Rose. Utterly, head over heels, barmy in love.

Hadn't meant for it to happen, hadn't wanted it - oh no. Certainly didn't _deserve_ it.

He'd been so alone for so long. After the Last Great Time War, there was - nothing. (Except the voices, the voices from all of time, never silent and never quite understood, all clamouring for his attention, and worse, none of them familiar, none of them _Gallifrey_.) But mostly the nothing.

It took him a long time to remember the Earth.

Once he had, he'd clung to it like a drowning man. It had changed - everything changed in the War - but it was still fundamentally Earth with its fundamentally human humans. One familiar thing in a strange lonely universe, and he'd thought it would give him purpose.

It did, at least, give him something to do.

He saved the world - didn't know how many times, always alone. He'd never stuck closer to that little planet than in the years between Gallifrey and -

Rose.

Suddenly, out of the darkness: Rose. She was brilliant, funny, strong, cheeky. She made him laugh, she made him sick with worry, she made him _feel something_ besides dull empty grief. Rose reminded the Doctor that even sans Gallifrey, the universe remains _magnificent_: he could see it again, through her eyes, all new and sparkling and a bit miraculous and how could he have thought it was _nothing_ when there's still a big fantastic _everything_ to celebrate?

She got under his skin, and into his head, and into his hearts (count 'em). And yeah, he loved her. It got so he couldn't imagine travelling without her, didn't want to see anything if he couldn't share it with _Rose_.

It was strange. It was _fantastic_. He'd never been more sure of anything in his life - all 900-odd years of it. With her around, he'd never been less _afraid_ ( -- which, okay, looking back, that's more than a little worrisome).

He loved her with every fibre of his being.

And then he died for her, and every fibre of his being _changed_.

 

~  ~

 

"Do you ever --"

"Hmm?"

"Oh .. nothing."

Some beach, some planet, four thousand five hundred seventy-first century, 26:84 local time, TARDIS parked half a mile up the rocks: sunsset, plural, happens once every ten thousand fifty years, give or take. He's been given to big romantic gestures recently, he notices, not sure why, not really thinking about it.

He leans back on his hands, peers up at the first stars through the fringe of his hair (he likes the fringe, he's decided, it's unique - _that's one way of putting it_ floats through his mind, an amused voice, familiar voice - _not yet_ familiar voice - belongs to a name, two words, first word, starts with - _M? Mart_ \- oi now, no peeking, and he _likes the fringe_), blows it off his forehead and begins naming stars.

"Can't be nothing, Rose. What do you want to know?"

"Really nothing, though."

"... Okay."

Rose sits forward a bit, arms round her knees, not noticing how the triple sunset paints her hair blue and gold and ginger.

The Doctor notices. He thinks it's lovely, thinks she was meant to sit on this rock by this ocean at this time and turn that peculiar shade of amethyst, how fortunate for the universe that he came along to make it happen, well done Doctor.

He thinks there's something missing from that thought, can't imagine what - he doesn't _lose thoughts_.

"I mean, just - you gave up your life for me."

"Is that all? Not to worry! Got a few spares."

"Yeah, I guess you do."

Rose is still facing the sunsset, the light flaring green as the first sun sinks beneath the watery horizon: "I'm still _me_, Rose," the Doctor says softly to her back, again, "I promise I'm still me."

_Methinks the gentleman doth protest_ flits into his thoughts, and he _curses_ the blasted playwright, because it's there, right then, as he sits up and pulls Rose close, her head falling on his shoulder, his cheek against her hair, watching together in silence as the last tendrils of brilliant colour fade to grey and then the black of a year-long night's beginning - it's there that he finally starts to understand.

 

~  ~

 

He told her he was the same man, and that wasn't a lie, but to his mind, now, it's near enough.

Thing is, Rose was good for him. Rose was the best thing that ever happened to him - she rescued him from loneliness, pulled him back from the edge of indifference, reminded him to care about people in the specific and not the just the abstract.

By some miracle, a London shopgirl reached into the depths of a soul not merely scarred by, but _created of_ destruction and despair and death, pieced the fragments back together, slowly, bit by bit, so by the time he recognised delight, reclaimed his hopes and dreams, felt _desire_ for the first time in - how long - he hardly realised how far he'd come. She gave him a new destiny, a new beginning out of ashes.

Of course he loved her. He wouldn't be the _Doctor_ if not for her. He'd be a shell of a Time Lord, mucking about Earth without knowing why, waiting for the final death and hoping it's soon. Of _course_ he loved her.

He knows all this, and he's a bit in awe.

Because he remembers loving Rose like a fact, like he remembers the capital of Belgium, but he can't remember what it _felt like_.

And he could never, ever have told her that. Not for anything. Not for another ten - ten _thousand_ lifetimes.

 

~  ~

 

Earth this time, year 207, Teotihuacan, marketplace. Rose turns down the pulque and agave cakes in favour of hot cocoa and sweet potato chips.

"_Hot cocoa_ and _chips_?"

"You did know that chocolate and potatoes - both native to the Americas, yeah?"

"Don't care, haven't had anything this good in" - giggles - "'bout two thousand years, I guess!"

He beams, laughs delightedly when she spits out the first taste of bitter, unprocessed cocoa. (Doesn't tell her about the time cocoa almost got him married, and he might have done, six (subjective, solar) months ago, but it was twelve hundred years in the future, five hundred (or fifty) in the past and twenty-five miles to the southwest, cultures change and anyway she _doesn't need to know_.)

It's a festival day, and they've just forestalled an Arctomorph invasion. The gods must still be placated, however, and he's explained the principle of ritual human sacrifice, reiterated that they can't interfere with the timeline more than they've done already -- may have made an ill-timed joke, how it wouldn't kill _him_ to lose a heart (he thinks) -- and she's gone quiet again.

".... How many?"

"How many what?" He doesn't want to have this conversation. Not ever if he can help it.

"Spare lives. How many d'you got."

"Thirteen. Well -- used to be thirteen. Should be thirteen."

"And you're on number ..."

He steers Rose off the street, to the courtyard where they'd parked the TARDIS that morning, empty while its inhabitants revel in the new year. He nicks a chip, grinning, and she just waits.

"Ten. Number ten. Hello! Pleasure to make your acquaintance, Rose Tyler." Still grinning, he holds out his hand, and she bats it away.

"Ten! You never said -"

"Never came up." He shrugs, and leans against the side of the blue box.

Rose is wandering, chips in one hand, the other trailing along the brilliantly painted fresco on the courtyard wall, a plumed goddess surrounded by frolicking souls in an afterlife of music and mist.

"You're closer to thirteen, and it's all because of me."

She pauses, under a fresco of a great green tree, bent low beneath the weight of a thousand men on its branches.

"Not your fault. You saved the world, Rose; least I could do really." He'd given her life, then; but now he knows the future he took from her, and he wonders, if she knew, if she'd say it's worth it.

She turns, arms crossed; drops the chip paper and looks at him, all lost and out of time; and the Doctor shivers without knowing why. "But don't you ... I don't think you regret it for a moment, do you? I think it never even crossed your mind."

"What, let you die? Let the TARDIS burn you out? Not for a second - not for a nanosecond. You're worth a thousand lives."

He's not sure why he said that, except it's true; they're all worth it, and of course he'd do it again, _ten_ thousand times if he could - she's alive, and if she's lost something priceless in the process, well, she never needs to know. And the Doctor: he's all right.

"You're daft."

He's not, not really, not yet, not anymore - but she's smiling again, and moving his way, and that's all he needs.

"Might be, yeah!" They grin at each other, and he holds the TARDIS door open as Rose passes from the world.

 

~  ~

 

Just as the word "fantastic" no longer quite fits against his teeth, neither do the words "I belong to you alone, Rose Tyler." (They would have flowed easily before, he thinks, if he'd had the chance to try. He's a bit glad he didn't.)

See, the thing about regeneration - it's more than just renewal, just a new body - it's a synthesis, a knitting together of all that he's ever been and known and learnt.

He wonders if it didn't go wrong, last time, in the aftermath the War, riding the waves of an explosion that spanned a hundred billion years in every dimension. He'd been blind, broken and damaged and closed and cut off, in such pain that he could barely hear above the roar of it, certainly couldn't _feel_; and his new body had been a perfect fit to that damaged psyche.

Small favours: he can't remember what the pain felt like, either, though he recalls the fact of it and knows he never wants to be there again.

But then Rose - oh Rose, only Rose - put him back together again, salved his hurt, cured his _spirit_ \- bent the healing light of the universe _just so_ that he could see it and know it and love it again, for what it _was_ and not for what it _wasn't_.

And then, regeneration, and that's all a part of _him_ now. The Doctor doesn't need a filter to revel in the wonders of existence, no longer needs a lens to focus his passion where it's needed (does need specs, though, and there's irony for you), not now he remembers, for _his own self_, what it is to know and love and cherish the whole of everything everywhere. He sees the universe through his own eyes without looking first to her.

He's himself again, The Doctor, complete and whole; though there's a part of him that's _Rose_ now and always will be (the best part, he thinks, sometimes).

But words don't fit in his mouth; feelings don't fit in his synapses.

Of course he cherishes the company and Rose is brilliant and amazing, and he'd love to travel with her as long she'll have him; but he doesn't _need_ her, not anymore, not Rose specifically. Rose Tyler is not the beginning and end of his world, silly to even think it - but the day he understands that _once, yes, she was exactly that_, he dies inside, just a little (because how could he forget, and how could he lose _that_), buries it deep, and pretends.

That's why he hesitates, the few times she brings up forever, mentions what they'd do together if they lost the TARDIS; why he hesitates too long at the last second, in the surf, on the very last day.

He can't lie, not to Rose; and he can't (won't, not _ever_) tell her the truth.

Sometimes he hurts with the guilt of it.

 

~  ~

 

When Martha finds him, the Doctor is stretched out in a far corner of the console room, head pillowed on his hands beneath one of the big gold-blue pylons, ankles crossed.

"Hey," she says, sitting down cross-legged by his chest. "You all right?"

"'Course I am," he answers cheerily, and keeps staring up at the domed ceiling. "Should really get up there and dust, one of these days. Think we picked up a spider in the 1600s."

"You'll never," and he can hear the smile in her voice.

"Sure I will. Just watch." The Doctor half-heartedly wills himself to get up and find the cleaning supplies. Doesn't work. "Tomorrow, that is. You just watch me do it _tomorrow_."

"I'll be waiting for that." Martha grins. "So I can sell tickets."

The Doctor extracts a hand and pokes her in the shoulder. "Quiet. I keep my TARDIS _spotless_, understand?"

"Uh-huh." Sobering, Martha grabs his arm and cradles it in her lap. "You miss her, don't you? Joan?"

The Doctor looks at her, finally, one eyebrow raised. "Joan? Miss Redfern? Miss Joan? Naw, well, I never really knew her, did I?"

"Doctor, you nearly _married_ her."

"Did I?" Did he, he wonders. Would he really have done it? If not for the Family, if not for Martha, if not for all the death and destruction ... if he closes his eyes, he can almost _taste_ the vision the watch gave them, can almost feel the sheer unqualified _joy_ of his wedding day, of the life that could (never) have been.

"I can't believe you never thought of falling in love," Martha whispers. "Pears. You warned me about _pears_."

"Well, I _really_ can't stand pears," he answers back, and it's almost rote. "Pears are everywhere. Can't be too careful." He's still grasping, somehow, after those feelings, wondering, could this be, could this be how - Rose -

"Whereas love is something you'd never come across in a million years."

"... I _have_ been in love, you know." The Doctor regards her through narrowed eyes, considering.

"Oh have you," Martha says, and that strange little smile is back. "You mean Rose, I guess."

"Well, s'pose she's one." The Doctor sits up and leans his head against the wall, and fine, yeah, he'd been thinking of her, but that doesn't mean he wants to _talk_ about it, and why is it that Martha's always bringing up these things? She wants to know, he guesses, she _really_ wants to know, and he feels all sort of - strange and grateful for a moment, but doesn't think about it.

"Oh you 's'pose', do you?" Martha's voice is teasing, but the Doctor, all at once, is remembering Joan, and the way she _looked_ at him, after he changed, how for half a moment he'd felt the most despicable creature in the world, and he - wonders.

"I - well. Martha," he starts to ask, and he only hesitates for a second because, well, it's _Martha_, "d'you think she loves me?"

She smiles, looks a bit sad, and he'll have to ask her about that someday, "'Course she does, Doctor."

He's flailing, grasping at anything he can wrap his mind around, because it needs to make sense but he _can't understand_ \- "Why? Why would - how can you know that?"

"Well," Martha says, and cups his cheek in her hand, "I don't know Rose, but I know _you_, and Doctor," she smiles again, lighting up her whole face, and the Doctor can't imagine what she's about to say, "_you're **you**_. How could she not love you?"

He has no idea how to answer that. Yes, well, he's _the Doctor_, and he's magnificent, he really is, but that's not - and Joan -

"I - but - you - she -"

"I mean, you love her, right?"

He doesn't answer and he can't look at her, because he hadn't meant to be asked that today by her (or ever by anyone), but really it just figures, doesn't it, and after a moment Martha's eyebrows go up, and her mouth forms a little "oh."

"Oh, Doctor," she says. "Oh, _Doctor_, oh, what have you done?"

"Nothing," he replies obstinately, after a moment. "Nothing at all, and anyway, it doesn't matter, does it, she's gone."

"She's not." Martha's eyes are wide, and her hand grips the Doctor's arm, so tight. "Rose is here, in this room, every day. You have to know; you never stop thinking about her, not for a moment, do you, and how can you not realise that she's everywhere? And you _don't love her_?"

"Oh, Martha." The Doctor reaches out, lifts her chin with one finger, his mind's in a turmoil and he's not sure what he sees in her face. "'Course I love Rose, and I love you, and - but there was a time, a _long_ time ago, when it was Rose and me - I was _so_ different then, Martha, you wouldn't have liked me - and she saved me, oh, saved me a thousand times over. I'd have done anything for her ... _anything_ at all, whatever she asked me for, all of me, I was hers."

He's staring off into space, trying to remember, trying to _feel it_, and he barely hears Martha's whispered reply: "But you changed."

"Yeah." He lets out a breath, and he can hear his hearts beating in his ears. Has he told her about regeneration yet? But then, he thinks, maybe it's all the same, in the end - people changing, lives changing, and somehow, in his mind, Rose doesn't.

"And you never told her."

"I -" the Doctor draws his legs up, rests his chin on his knees. "She was so happy, and she _saved me_, and now I've _lost her_, and I can't even _remember how it_ .."

He buries his head in his arms.

"So it's not just that you were turning human, that you didn't think to plan for it," Martha says, quietly, and the Doctor feels the brush of her fingers through the fabric of his coat. "It's that - you really, truly thought you _couldn't_ fall in love again."

"No, of course I - " he looks up suddenly because she's _wrong_, she has to be, and he meets her eyes, and something there makes him _stop_, and _think_, and - "that can't be right, I can't have - oh, Martha, what's happened to me?"

"Nothing at all, Doctor," she says, sad and affectionate. "You've been human. Just human. That's all."

The Doctor freezes, because those words, that sentence - it's everything he's been afraid to want since longer than he can remember, and if the price is - _this_ \- and somehow it's, _still_, all because of Rose - he suddenly hasn't missed Gallifrey so _fiercely_ since -

\- well, since the last time he sat and _talked_ to Martha.

He reaches out blindly for her hand, and she's there, and they don't say anything at all.

 

~  ~

 

He can fall in love. He _can_. He _knows_ he can, because that's part of what Rose gave back to him - love and loving, everything and everyone, all the little people and the big friendly space monsters and the galaxies turning in the void, each and every one of them specifically, and after all, that's what falling in love _is_, isn't it? Loving, specifically?

Thanks to Rose, the Doctor's remembered how to love. Thanks to Rose, he's remembered exactly _why_ little Planet Earth is always so worth saving. Thanks to Rose, he's made friends again, real friends. Jack and Martha, Donna and Jackie and (oh how he'd missed) Sarah Jane; even the Master and the year that wasn't but always will be - without Rose he'd still be forever alone.

But he _can't_ be what she wanted, not now, not ever, not for her, not for anyone, not without losing himself. Because even then, he was always going to lose her, someday, and it's just - the universe is too magnificent and _fantastic_ and vast and kind of marvellous to tie the joy of it to the lifespan of a single human. He forgot that, for a while, and the terrible tragedy of it is: it took Rose to remind him: he had to fall in love with Rose to understand that he could _never_ fall in love with Rose.

Maybe, the Doctor thinks, it's only that now he's in love with the universe, and by extension, everyone, and also by extension, no one at all. Makes a kind of daft sense, and it saddens him, but he's had the chance, now, (dear brave Joan), and knows he wouldn't trade it.

And River Song? Well. He. He's not thinking about that. He'll figure that out when it comes. (Who **is** she? **Who** is she?) ... He's _really not thinking about it_.

Except - if he does fall in love with her, and Donna's right, it seems as if he might, maybe, one day - why? Why her? And why not Rose, who certainly has earned it, certainly deserves it - the universe is vastly unfair, he thinks, a jealous lover, and he wonders - what is it about River? And how will he know?

But he's not thinking about it.

 

~  ~

 

Spoilers are not in fact terribly relevant, not if you inhabit the entirety of time and space.

That is, once the events are fixed.

This event is now fixed, and the Doctor dances.

It's a brilliant night on Squantibulous IV, and he's brought River here on a whim, popped by her flat ten centuries in the past and a million light-years away, just because he wants to, and because he knows she'd love to see the ruins of a civilisation that in her time is the galaxy's richest superpower, what the years and the radiation and the dust and the tourists have done to the plastipermacrete and ferroglass. Somehow she's convinced the faculty to accept her timeless data, and oh he'd love to be in that meeting - !

Samples collected and readings taken, the black hole on the edge of the sky duly admired, they've had dinner on the patio at the resort, and under the stars, he's asked her to dance.

It's a slow burn, this thing with River Song, and the Doctor really doesn't know what he's doing. He's picked her up, a few times, since he met her (no, _she_ met _him_) at the dig on Mertherion where he'd stopped her excavating a Cyberman. They'll go off somewhere, and then he'll bring her home; but he always comes back, after a few weeks, and he's not sure if it's because he wants to or because he knows he will.

At some point, he thinks, the distinction no longer matters.

"Thank you for bringing me here, Doctor," River murmurs as they step across the dance floor, alone in the mist, the other diners content to eat and depart (though they're mostly natives; maybe they can't hear the music).

"'Course," he answers. "Knew you'd want to see it." When she's seen it on the subnet, this restaurant is the Senate chambers; it'd be surreal if it wasn't so normal, for them.

The Doctor doesn't think he's in love, but he's been - watching for it, expecting it, like a dangerous creature stalking him in the darkness. He's pretty sure that's not how it's meant to work.

She's nothing like Rose, but then nothing _is_ like Rose, and Rose is safe and happy and she's forgiven him, he hopes.

It's nothing like with Joan, either; he's not giddy or awkward or nervous, and he's not delirious with joy.

And it's nothing at all like the Master. (Well. All right. Maybe just a little like the Master.)

He thinks he might just be almost content, though, and he isn't sure that counts. One of these days he'll ask Martha.

"River," he asks, under the stars and the light-trees and the unlikely black hole, because he _doesn't know_, "why d'you follow me, out here? Why do you always come with me, when I ask?"

She leans back in his embrace. Her hair's pulled up in a tail and she regards him, seriously, with just a hint of a smile. "Why, Doctor? Do you even need to ask?"

"Well, I'm asking," he answers, smiling back, not thinking about (_Rose_) the last time he was on her end of a question like this.

"Because you're the Doctor," River says, and dips him low in a manner that utterly fails to coincide with the music. "Because you're magnificent." She pulls him up, and they're off, back in step; River's leading and it isn't, quite, a waltz. "Because you take me places and show me things that I'd never learn in twenty lifetimes. But mostly - "

The key changes, becomes slower, sweeter, and suddenly they're barely even moving.

"Mostly," River says, "it's your eyes." She reaches over, brushes her thumb across his temple. "Your eyes are _ancient_."

And the Doctor can do nothing but pull her close and sway to the song of the fluted dragonflies, because it's not even a year since she marvelled at _how very young._

 

But that's the future, and the Doctor is spoiler-free.

 

~  ~

 

And he does miss Rose. Quite a lot really. Terribly so - more than he wants to consider, sometimes. Loves her, even; loves them all actually, everyone he's known. (Well, maybe not _everyone_.)

But more than that, he owes her. Owes her everything, for what she's given back to him, what he took from her.

And if he only _could_, he'd -

Well, no; he wouldn't. Maybe at first, right away, if he'd known, if he'd realised -- but no. That's not who he _is_, and it never can be again. Wasn't even then, if he's honest; in the clarity of hindsight he's finally aware of how terribly damaged he was. Then. (Is, now?) (And thank you, Rose - honestly, _thank you_ \- for pulling him out of it.)

He's sorry about Martha - _so_ sorry, Martha, truly - misses her most of all sometimes, he thinks - and doubly glad that Donna seems to be a sensible creature.

And River, well - he'll deal with that when it comes.

Sometimes he thinks it was a relief, losing her to the other universe, not having to face the consequences of his almost-lie, not having to fear - what she'd ask of him, knowing he'd give it, knowing it'd break him. And then, again, the guilt.

Because the Doctor knows there's a debt still unpaid.

 

~  ~

 

"-- that's the thing, innit?"

The Doctor's got his arm back in the console, one final pass with the sonic screwdriver and she's all put together, good as new.

He stands back up and leans against the console, lost in himself. Has he really never mentioned Rose, to Donna? Since Christmas? He hasn't meant not to, but - he wonders for a second if that'd mean he's over her, or just repressed, and if it matters.

"Hey! Mr Man! -- Mr _Alien_ Man." Donna, magnificent Donna's snapping her fingers in front of his eyes, that pinched look saying she's not only annoyed but more than a bit worried he's lost it.

Has he?

Aww, nope - the Doctor's always all right.

He grins. Bit wildly - he's had a _day_. But it's a real grin, and she smiles in return, that rare, sad Donna smile.

"Hello, Donna Noble!"

She shakes her head at him, and he knows he's won; she won't press. And today he's glad.

"So, are we going somewhere, or what then?"

The Doctor almost notices something, out the corner of his eye, familiar yet strange. He closes his eyes, swallows, still for just a moment, foot braced on the console, hand on the brake.

Then he winks at Donna (she rolls her eyes), pulls the handbrake, twists a bearing _here_, thumps the console _there_ and they're off, careening through spacetime toward - oh, why not, been a while since he's stopped at D'akara't, say ten million years ago, pyramids a thousand times bigger than Egypt, Donna'll love it ...

"Allons-y!"

 

~  ~

 

And.

Rose is still there, in the swirling formless eddies of time. She's in his future as well as his past. Somewhen not too distant, Rose is coming back.

And the Doctor is _terrified_.

(He's not thinking about it.)

 

~  ~


End file.
